I (27F) have been with my boyfriend (29M) for about two years. He works in tech. I do not, so I am only hearing this second hand.
Recently he started talking about a woman he works with. He went on and on about how people at his company treat her unfairly and assume she is incompetent. He kept saying she is extremely smart and great to work with and that everyone else just “doesn’t see it.”
He then told me about a situation involving a code review. From what I understood, multiple people questioned or criticized her code, and according to him they were all wrong and she was right. He said later it was proven she had done the correct thing. While telling me this, he actually started crying. Like tears and shaking voice.
I honestly did not know how to react. It felt absurd. This is a tech company, there are multiple engineers reviewing code. It is really hard for me to believe that several people were all wrong and only he was right, especially when I am only hearing his version. It feels more likely that the situation was more nuanced than “everyone else assumed she was stupid.”
I also found it concerning how emotionally invested he is in this woman’s career. He talks about her like he is her personal defender. I get feeling bad if someone is treated unfairly, but crying over a coworker’s code review feels excessive to me. It also does not help that this woman has a solid job in tech and probably makes more money than I do, so it is hard for me to see her as some helpless victim yet he says she should be leveled higher.
I told him that I thought he was being dramatic and that it made me uncomfortable how intensely he was reacting. I also said that if multiple people on his team questioned her work, they probably were not all acting out of bias and that maybe he is not seeing the full picture. He got very upset and accused me of being uncaring.
Now he is hurt and says I do not respect his values. I feel like he is projecting and getting way too emotionally involved with a coworker.
AITA for not believing his take on the situation and being weirded out that he cried over it?